The outdoors maiden flight wasn’t a disaster but proved that I need to make aerodynamic and weight distribution adjustments. There is a little bit of head wind and it didn’t beat the wind. However, the new flight controller showed potential, which will make smaller units possible.

Also, no visible damage after that rough landing. Carbon fiber is doing its job!

Getting better. First full flight without crash.... By the way I never had to fix the unit by the result of any crashes!!! After the flight the batteries balanced at 560MAH. However, they should hold 900MAH but they are old. This puts the theoretical flight time at over 3minutes, which is pretty good for this size and considering the carbon armor...

I did many flight tests with the indestructible Nano this past week, most of which ended in a crash. In the end, most of the design and flight controller issues were sorted out and the unit was domesticated, being very close to being a real Mono with very good stability and ability to reach high speeds. However, I need to change the wing design to reflect the things learned and make the unit even more durable and faster.

Before I replace the old wings, I wanted to give the condition of the unit after probably 30ish crashes, some as high as 100ft. I even hit a tree once! One crash was on the concrete and others were on grass. I never lost a servo neither an impeller, which is AMAZING! One leg was broken and fixed (which will cause a design improvement), one power cable snapped and was soldered back.

See Pics attached.

I am happy that I am almost there for the first amazingly fast and agile indestructible Mono…

Installed the newly designed wings. It took me a while to re-balance it (which is a real for the smaller units) but then: boom baby!

There are 2 flights with different setups in this video. First 2 minutes is the first flight without the front wing. It flies pretty good but at 1:30 minute mark it loses balance, telling me needs a little upgrade. Then I fly it a little more until my old batteries die at 2 minute mark.

Then I installed the front wing that I use on some of my units. This flight is after 2 minute mark. It tilts better and flies really well. But this is a test and I have to push it harder and harder. At almost full stick & full horizontal at 3 minute mark it lost it. But its fine, I fly it a little longer after with some cool close passes.

Now I will calibrate the max tilt angle on the FC and we are good to put on the new batteries and have some fun!!!

The flight time is a solid +3 minutes, which is really good for a nano. Flies like a dream I built multiple 40mm edf nano units in the past. I had all kinds of problems from low fan power to stabilization or electrical problems… In the end this way or that way all were totaled. It is ironic to me that the successful unit turned out to be a 35mm fan in a carbon armor. Feels good having this figured out in the end…

Replaced the old battery with a new one and after a couple of tests I could get a longer flight time without crashing. It still crashed in the end and broke it, but good experience was gained with this first MonoMaya prototype. I have a very good idea on the direction to go to get a real Mono out of this cute ball

The new MonoMaya. This one has a 35mm EDF and a carbon fiber frame. MonoMaya is a challenging project. Airflow, heat dissipation, weight distribution and internal design are all very tricky and hard to deal with. The first try was last year these times with a 30mm EDF. I always wanted to revisit since then. The carbon frame added some weight therefore the normal 2S setup didn’t support the flight. So, I switched over to 3S and tried to make the necessary changes to deal with extra heat, etc… 3S batteries that I have are very old it’s not holding the altitude for along time. Will order some new batteries and test again.

Yes it did I found some other batteries in a little better condition and had a longer flight right after this one but lost 2 impellers to the sheet on the bed so far. Ordered the new batteries but want to change the interior settings before proceeding. Will try making it more efficient.

I got some very inconsistent results from MonoMaya and decided to go a step back and fly it naked to make sure everything works fine. The problems that I found: 3s setup slowly fried the motor and the motor was about to give up and one of the servos was acting funny.

So, I replaced the fan and the funny servo. Recalibrated and ordered a set of new 2s batteries. Now the unit is alive and balanced. Now it’s time to build the spherical body around it.

I have been trying to figure how to come up with a durable and light spherical body for MonoMaya since the last video weeks ago. At last I came up with this carbon fiber flex body, which I can cover with whatever I want. I got inspired by an art work that I saw at a store

Oh… my… God! I have a love and hate relationship with the nano units… It’s so hard to get them right. After I built the carbon fiber sphere I had another series of failures. I had to cut the tube to reduce weight, rebuilt all carbon fiber supporting structure from a thinner and lighter sheet, fixing some other design errors. I went back to my notes from the successful nano units and build the exact replica of those nozzles and replaced one more servo. After all this work, it still took me tens of crashes and endless tuning hours and fixes to get the contraption to fly.

For the first time in a long time I felt like the times that I first started the MonoPhan project, where I used to have so little progress and so many crashes…